Co-editors: Seán Mac Mathúna • John Heathcote
Consulting editor: Themistocles Hoetis
Field Correspondent: Allen Hougland
The angry rhetoric, the
mouth-foaming oaths, and the muffled political threats
arising from the 11-day detention of the 24-man crew of the
damaged U.S. spy plane in China, are already beginning to
fade. Political leaders in both
countries are speaking in subdued, measured tones, in sharp
contrast to the strong, bellicose terms used at the very
beginning of the crisis. While anti-Chinese speech
predictably arose in the aftermath of the downing of the spy
plane and the detention of U.S. Navy personnel, there came a
quiet, almost imperceptable, message, one coded and no less
powerful for its silence, that a burgeoning Sino-American
conflict was bad -- for business. And it is business that drives
international relations, not politics, for both Bush and his
Chinese counterpart, Jiang Zemin, President of the Peoples
Republic of China, are at the mercy of powerful economic
forces at home. When the average person is
asked to speak out loud his, or her, thoughts about China, a
number of images spring to mind: The Oscar-nominated movie,
"Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon," the "Charlie's Angels"
remake featuring actress Lucy Liu, your friendly,
neighborhood Chinese restaurant, the late martial arts icon,
Bruce Lee, or to some, the specter of "red
communism." If the average businessman or
Wall St.-denizen is asked, another image emerges, as
evidenced by comments made in the April 7th-13th, 2001
edition of The Economist. For them, the economic potential
of China fairly makes them drool. An investment consultant,
Stuart Leckie, predicts the imminent integration of its
domestic (yuan) stockmarket, with the Hong Kong stock
market. When that happens, China will rank in the top three
markets in the world, right after the U.S. and
Japan. Andy Xie, regional economist
for Morgan Stanley, predicted that in less than 20 years,
China will be "the next $10 trillion economy," after the
U.S. An hour before the Chinese
foreign ministry announced it would release the American spy
plane crew, business news sources announced that Ford Motors
Co. would open a car factory in China. Historian-columnist Manning
Marable, in his recent collection of essays, Black
Liberation in Conservative America (1977), looking at the
changes of the last few decades, observed, "Communist China
today has arguably the most aggressively capitalist economy
on earth." (p. 3) In short, times have changed.
While the Bush administration sports more than its share of
cold warriors who would like nothing better than to portray
the Middle Kingdom as this month's candidate for the Evil
Empire, we must remember that business calls the tune
here. And business, from agricultural
salesmen, to tobacco merchants, to car dealers, ad
infinitum, looks to the vast 1.3 billion in China with a
capitalist hunger that virtually borders on lust. Business convinces its
politician servants to cool it; play nice. © 2001 - Mumia
Abu-Jamal For more information on Mumia,
contact:
"In the ancient
East flies a dragon, Whose name is China, In the ancient
East live a host of people, They are all descendants of
the Dragon. Under the Dragon's wings we are growing,
Growing as offspring of the Dragon With black eyes, black
hair, and yellow skin, We remain the Dragon's descendants
forever. -- Hou Dejian, "The Dragon's Descendants"
International
Concerned Family & Friends of
MAJ
P.O. Box 19709, Philadelphia, PA 19143, USA